The Sick Rose, a poem by William Blake, read here by Melita White of Feminist Confessional. You can read the poem (and an excellent analysis) here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/interestingliterature.com/2016/10/a-short-analysis-of-william-blakes-the-sick-rose/amp/

To me, this poem resonates very much with my own experiences of narcissistic abuse and that sense of being infiltrated/invaded by a parasitic predator. It’s uncanny, the feeling the poem gives me, and I instantly thought this was what Blake was writing about. In Blake’s time, the term narcissism was not used in the way it is today, but we’ve always had the concept of good vs evil. Bad people who want to sully the souls of good and innocent people and use them for their own purposes, have always existed. To me, that’s what this poem is clearly about, however, as with many good poems, it’s open to interpretation. The Sick Rose is such a wonderful poem, seemingly simple, yet complex and multifaceted. It also has clear sexual overtones, which intersect with the notion of being exploited and used by a narcissist, as mentioned above.

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